You Must Build a Boat - iOShttp://www.gameinformer.com/games/you_must_build_a_boat/b/ios/atom.aspxCommunity Server2014-02-12T21:15:00ZShe's Seaworthy/games/you_must_build_a_boat/b/ios/archive/2015/06/09/you-must-build-a-boat-review-game-informer.aspx2015-06-09T18:24:00Z2015-06-09T18:24:00Z<p><img border="0" src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/filestorage/CommunityServer.Components.SiteFiles/imagefeed/featured/eightyeightgames/youmustbuildaboat/buildaboat0519-610.jpg" style="max-width:610px;" alt="" /></p>
<p>I absolutely adored EightyEight Games&rsquo; endless-runner-meets-match-three masterpiece, 10000000. Everyone in the Game Informer offices did, too; it won our 2012 Best Mobile Exclusive award. I was beyond excited when I heard about its sequel, You Must Build A Boat. While the name only connects to the original in its eccentricity, the gameplay cultivates that same insatiable addiction while adding more depth to the formula.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Your Pitfall Harry-inspired avatar starts in a puny little craft with two monsters. They all agree to team up to make a boat that will hold up at sea, seemingly continuing the hero&rsquo;s escape from 10000000. The boat gets bigger as you progress, and newly recruited crew members populate the hold, opening shops and granting special bonuses like improved damage. In order to afford the upgrades and enlist the crew, you need to gather resources by running through dungeons, following the same basic structure as the original.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Your character runs across the top of the screen while you match up attacks and defensive tiles on the puzzle board below to help him run and fight his way as far as possible. Quests offer a specific set of tasks to complete each run, like making it a certain distance or scoring a certain amount of match-5s. The variety of quests kept me on my toes; the best ones force to you focus on a specific element and nail it rather than counting on luck to carry you through. The latter can get annoying, but the investment system helps keep you going in addition to the belief that things have to go your way eventually. Sometimes the distance goals at the end of the levels would bring me down, since I had already gone far enough in previous runs, but didn&rsquo;t have the specific quest activated at that time. Once you&rsquo;ve completed every quest in a specific zone, your newly expanded crew will hop up and down to make the boat sail upriver (don&rsquo;t think about the physics).&nbsp;</p>
<p>Between runs you visit with the ever-expanding shopkeepers to buy upgrades with gold, plus new resources like brains, brawn, and dust. The number of useful upgrades to buy constantly grows, sucking you into an addictive puzzle-and-shop loop. Before you know it, several hours have gone by and your phone battery is almost dead.</p>
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<p>Outside of hooking you and not letting go, the core gameplay systems have been deftly expanded and improved from the original. Tile sliding feels responsive and quick, and you can move them while they&rsquo;re in the middle of clearing to create additional matches if you&rsquo;re skilled enough. Special items like arrows and spells appear on the board, so your thumbs stay where the action is happening. New drone-like traps hover to your character in the top screen with a specific tile type you must match before it gets there, keeping you on your toes. If you&rsquo;re too late, you receive a nasty status effect, the worst of which freezes you in place until you make enough matches to break free. These traps are a pain, but train you to keep peripheral tabs on the action up top. Sometimes these things screw you over, but in a game with random tile drops, dungeon layouts, and rule modifiers, you&rsquo;re going to have lucky and unlucky runs alike. It&rsquo;s all about how you adapt when you get dealt a bad hand.</p>
<p>Gameplay remains compelling throughout the campaign, but the investment system loses luster toward the end. I was always in need of more brains, while I had more brawn than I could ever spend. Dust is the rarest commodity, and it&rsquo;s needed for all the best upgrades; I often had plenty of everything else and got stuck waiting for it to drop. It feels great to finally finish the titular boat and see the credits, but the only thing you can do afterward is dryly grind for any remaining upgrades and search for secret crew members. You can also start over with a harder difficulty, but you&rsquo;ll lose everything you&rsquo;ve earned. You earn a rank at the end, but without information on how it compares to others, you don&rsquo;t know whether to be pleased or ashamed.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Despite the slight drop-off toward the end and the low replay value, You Must Build a Boat is a great experience while it lasts. For a good six to nine hours, building a boat will indeed become the most important task in your life.</p>
<p><i>This review was based on the iOS version. You Must Build a Boat is also available on PC, Android, and Mac.</i></p>
<p><i>Be sure to watch our episode of <a href="http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/06/04/test-chamber-you-must-build-a-boat.aspx">Test Chamber</a> to see the game in action.</i></p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=7514137" width="1" height="1">GIBryanhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIBryan/default.aspx10000000 Sequel Sailing Our Way Next Month/games/you_must_build_a_boat/b/ios/archive/2015/05/19/10000000-sequel-sailing-our-way-next-month.aspx2015-05-19T20:45:00Z2015-05-19T20:45:00Z<p><img src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/filestorage/CommunityServer.Components.SiteFiles/imagefeed/featured/eightyeightgames/youmustbuildaboat/buildaboat0519-610.jpg" border="0" style="max-width:610px;" alt="" /></p>
<p>You Must Build A Boat, the sequel to 2012&#39;s hit puzzle game&nbsp;10000000, is hitting our shores in early June. In addition to the letting us know when we can play it, EightyEightGames has released a new gameplay trailer.</p>
<p>The game is coming to iOS, PC, and Android on June 4. Take a look at the video below to get a glimpse of how it plays (or a refresher, if you&#39;re a 10000000 vet). As you can see in the trailer, you aren&#39;t just building a boat; you&#39;re expanding it to become a floating base of operations.</p>
<p>(Please visit the site to view this media)</p>
<p>For more on the game, take a look at <a title="our interview" href="http://www.gameinformer.com/games/you_must_build_a_boat/b/ios/archive/2014/02/12/10000000-s-creator-answers-our-questions-about-you-must-build-a-boat.aspx">our interview</a> with the game&#39;s creator, Luca Redwood. He talks about how the game went from being an update to a full sequel, and his decision to offer You Must Build A Boat as a free download to people who bought&nbsp;10000000.</p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=7482250" width="1" height="1">GIJeffhttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIJeff/default.aspx10000000’s Creator Answers Our Questions About You Must Build A Boat/games/you_must_build_a_boat/b/ios/archive/2014/02/12/10000000-s-creator-answers-our-questions-about-you-must-build-a-boat.aspx2014-02-12T21:15:00Z2014-02-12T21:15:00Z<p><img style="max-width:610px;" src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/filestorage/CommunityServer.Components.SiteFiles/imagefeed/featured/kyleblog/10000000/youmustbuildaboat/Explore.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>10000000 was our favorite mobile-exclusive game of 2012. The match-three puzzle game offered an innovative take on a worn mobile genre, and we had trouble putting it down. The game&rsquo;s lone developer, Luca Redwood, recently announced the follow-up to 10000000 with the simply titled, You Must Build a Boat.</p>
<p>Redwood calls the game a sequel to 10000000, but it began its life as an expansion for the game. It will be offered for free to players who own the game on PC, and he is trying to work out a way to make sure players who own the game on mobile devices can download the game for free, as well.</p>
<p>You Must Build a Boat has a familiar art style to 10000000, and retains some of the puzzle mechanics. Redwood is playing coy about the core gameplay, as he hasn&rsquo;t released any images from that portion of the game yet.</p>
<p><b><img style="max-width:610px;float:left;" src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/filestorage/CommunityServer.Components.SiteFiles/imagefeed/featured/kyleblog/10000000/youmustbuildaboat/a-picture-of-me-for-some-re.jpg" border="0" alt="" />Where did the name You Must Build a Boat come from?</b></p>
<p>One of the things people told me they really liked about 10000000 was that it was really clear and up front about what the game was going to be and what was expected, so I wanted to do that again. </p>
<p>It was tempting to call it 10000001 or 20000000 for recognition but there isn&#39;t a score counter to get free in this game, so it doesn&#39;t make sense.</p>
<p>So, in the same vein, to win this game &ndash; you must build boat.</p>
<p><b>Is this a 10000000 sequel? Or just a large expansion? Or neither?</b></p>
<p>A sequel. It was an update, then a big update, then DLC, then an expansion pack, and now it&#39;s a sequel.</p>
<p>It&#39;s weird. I think it just comes down to my way of making games &ndash; have an idea, iterate putting that idea in and if it doesn&#39;t work (90-95% of the time) get rid of it. Otherwise, iterate on the next idea. I just keep repeating that until I arrive at the experience I want to give, but I kept going and going and going.</p>
<p>It&#39;s hard to pinpoint the exact moment where it crossed into sequel territory, but at some point I looked and saw there was a bit of a <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Modern_day">Triggers Broom situation</a>.</p>
<p>On top of that, part of the reason the whole thing ran out of control is that I didn&#39;t have a clear destination experience in my mind. When I stepped back and said, &ldquo;This is a new game and a new experience,&rdquo; everything got easier.</p>
<p><b>Why not sell a whole new game? Or sell the expansion as DLC?</b></p>
<p>I would have liked to have put You Must Build a Boat on sale as a fresh game. 10000000 has lots of fans, and I could have recouped the development cost without much trouble, I think.</p>
<p>But I&#39;d already said that there was a big free update coming, and I have to stick to that. There&rsquo;s a good chance it&#39;ll be a big business mistake giving it away for free to 10000000 owners, but it&#39;s the right thing to do.</p>
<p><img style="max-width:610px;" src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/filestorage/CommunityServer.Components.SiteFiles/imagefeed/featured/kyleblog/10000000/youmustbuildaboat/Recruit.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p><b>Will You Must Build a Boat have new music from the same artists?</b></p>
<p>Yes! I&#39;ve got two artists working on music. Matthew Klingensmith (DwarfCorp), who did the original theme for 10000000 and now Whitaker Trebella (Pivvot, Polymer, Nimble Quest, and more). I&#39;ve already got a couple of tracks in there and they are just as catchy.</p>
<p><b><a target="_blank" href="http://www.youmustbuildaboat.com/">You mention &quot;choose-your-own-adventure&quot; style choices</a>. Will there be more of a narrative this time around?</b></p>
<p>There is to an extent. Like 10000000, this is meant to be a game that you can just pick up and play, so I&#39;m trying not to go too deep on the narrative side if it ends up being a contradiction.</p>
<p>The choose-your-own-adventure part comes under that wing too. My idea was to have a &lsquo;Have Fun&rsquo; button, and when you press it you have fun. That&#39;s the button that explores your location and comes up with an interesting decision for you to make.</p>
<p>In general, I wanted more discovery and more content than 10000000, but keeping the same up-front goal, with some surprises and turns along the way.</p>
<p><b><b><a target="_blank" href="http://www.youmustbuildaboat.com/">You also mention capturing monsters</a></b>. Is that a Pok&eacute;mon-esque addition?</b></p>
<p>Yeah, that&rsquo;s fairly accurate. The goal with this change is to keep the same frantic gameplay that really worked well from 10000000, but try to put in more strategy and thought, too.</p>
<p>In the current iteration, you can bring one to two captured monsters along with you. They each have different strengths and weakness. Some might not do a lot, but give you passive bonuses. Some might be a huge help, but only in certain situations. Some strike directly, some give the player more control by manipulating the board, and some massage the RNG more towards your goal.</p>
<p>I&#39;m trying to end up with a situation where, sure, you will have some favorites that you really like to bring along that complement your play style, but there is a subset which work well for this dungeon or mission, and which ones to take is an interesting decision to make.</p>
<p><img style="max-width:610px;" src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/filestorage/CommunityServer.Components.SiteFiles/imagefeed/featured/kyleblog/10000000/youmustbuildaboat/Choose.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p><b>Can you talk about the puzzle aspects of the game? Will it remain mostly unchanged from 10000000?</b></p>
<p>This is probably where I spent the most time iterating. I tried some pretty radical changes, like a turn based mode that looked and sounded really good, but the game is all about the frantic action so it just didn&#39;t work.</p>
<p>I think, for this part of the game I&#39;ve tried to do improvements rather than big changes. Things like wood and stone are gone because matching them wasn&#39;t particularly fun. You can find items in any tile because that&rsquo;s more exciting, There are more things you can encounter and have to deal with during a run. You are directly upgrading your tiles, and that&rsquo;s more of an informed choice to what you want now to upgrade too.</p>
<p><b>Do you have a release window in mind?</b></p>
<p>I have an idea of where I&#39;d want to release it, but I&#39;m not committing to anything. This is because of the way I make games. I decide on the experience and then iterate until I feel that the game provides it, so I can never predict for certain when that is going to be.</p>
<p>That said, I&#39;m pretty happy with where it is, which is why I thought it was finally safe to announce what I was doing. It&#39;s more about polish and tweaking now.</p>
<p><i>For our thoughts on 10000000 (as well as Redwood&#39;s) <a href="http://www.gameinformer.com/blogs/editors/b/gikyle_blog/archive/2012/11/30/10000000-is-the-perfect-mobile-game.aspx">check out some</a> <a href="http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/12/24/moments-scoring-10000000.aspx">of our previous coverage</a>, as well as our <a href="http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/12/26/afterwords-10000000.aspx">Afterwords feature on 10000000</a>. For more on You Must Build a Boat, check out Redwood&#39;s blogs <a href="http://eightyeightgames.com/2014/01/23/introducing-you-must-build-a-boat/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.youmustbuildaboat.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></p><div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=6574635" width="1" height="1">GIKylehttp://www.gameinformer.com/members/GIKyle/default.aspx